Demands of India in WTO

♤ to find out a permanent solution for its public stockholding programmes for food security.

♤ special safeguard mechanism for millions of farmers from unforeseen surges in agricultural imports.

♤ an agreement for removing bottlenecks for facilitating trade in services.

The G-33 Coalition of developing countries led by Indonesia in 2014 and 2015 had offered several options to reach a permanent solution, such as to:

♤ include these ‘support programmes’ for food security under Green Box which is exempted from any subsidy reduction commitments.

♤ modify the rules to address the historical inequities in the existing WTO’s Agreement on

Agriculture.

♤ G-33 countries also want that “traditional staple food crop” term used in Bali decision be replaced by “foodstuffs” to cover all food crops.

The above two proposals (inclusion in Green Box, and addressing historical inequalities) have been defied by US, EU, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, etc. They argue that inclusion in green box:

♤ will amount to a carte blanche i.e. unrestricted power to act on one’s own discretion,

♤ would lead to unsustainable production; and

♤ the permanent solution must be based on the Bali agreement, which affirms that such programmes lead to distortion.